What makes a great Star Trek villain? That’s easy. It’s always been about character. They’re never one-dimensional. (Unless you count Harry Mudd, played more for comic relief than anything else.) They’re sympathetic. The same goes for pegging a great Star Trek alien.

When one thinks of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek films, "hilarious hijinks" is probably not the first thing that springs to mind. Yet, that’s what we have to share today in this amusing clip of bloopers and gag reel material from the filmmaker’s second foray into a place where "no man has gone before", Star Trek Into Darkness.

Reddit user ThatNordicGuy is responsible for an amazing Photoshopping job that has massaged the faces of Abrams’ Star Trek cast over the faces of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the original series legends. In most cases it works out pretty well:

"I was showing my wife an early cut of Star Trek Into Darkness," he said, "and there was this one scene where she was literally like, ‘I just can’t see what’s going on. I don’t understand what that is.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I went too nuts on this.’”

STID co-screenwriter Bob Orci is the latest to lash out at a critic who dared to question the integrity of Abrams’ sequel. In the comments section of an article posted to TrekMovie, Orci lashed out in defense of his effort. To his credit, the column is titled, Star Trek Is Broken: Here Are Ideas On How to Fix It. Pretentious. And Orci called the author on the carpet.

Now that we’ve gotten past some of the more Cumberbatch-y releases, there’s plenty of other releases out this week that might very well suit your fancy. It’s a great week for television releases, from network to subscription cable stations, and some more of this week’s releases are listed can be perused more fully after the jump.

See that hunk of metal in the circle there? Don't you dare call it a hunk of metal, or a stupid little short-circuit or any other kind of C-3PO insults. That's R2-D2, being sucked out of the U.S.S. Enterprise and into space in the middle of the Vengeance's attack in Star Trek Into Darkness. Yes, R2-D2 in Star Trek. It's a crazy world we live in

Yesterday we brought you a fuzzy rumor that Benedict Cumberbatch was in line for a role in Star Wars: Episode VII. Today we are obligated to bring you the denial from his representative. Talking to The Daily News the Star Trek Into Darkness and Sherlock star's rep said this

I love how they break down the many ways in which Captain Kirk is a horrible leader, from really failing to protect anything in the universe to replacing Simon Pegg with Anton Yelchin as chief engineer. Fictional characters or no, you always want to keep Pegg by your side. Or at least I do. Platonically.

The trade says that Paramount started looking beyond the Bad Robot regulars after the release of Star Trek Into Darkness and contemplated getting X-Men: First Class scribes Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz or a younger pair of writers to pen the movie. Ultimately, they returned back to Kurtzman and Orci, who also worked Paramount on the first two films in the Transformers franchise as well as Mission: Impossible III.

Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz are being eyed to pen the third installment of this rebooted sci-fi franchise. Together the pair might be best known for contributing to superhero scripts like Thor and X-Men: First Class. So, we can safely assume they have a solid base for scripting the kind of out of this world action sequences a Star Trek movie demands.

J.J. Abrams’ second Star Trek movie and the twelfth in the franchise did well at the box office, grossing nearly $450,000 and paving the way for a third movie. Those who can’t wait for the new flick will at least be able to watch Star Trek into Darkness when it hits Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand on September 10.

Looking to Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover Part III, and Epic for inspiration, we've pulled together a selection of Marvel Universe movies, romances from literature, and crowd-pleasing comedies with underrated stars.

Want to know how they chose the film's villain? Want to know just how much they think about Trek fans and what they've been demanding of the sequel ever since the first one came out? (Spoiler: they care a lot). Want to hear about the decision-making that went into one of the film's biggest scenes?

It’s too bad it’s impossible to get an exact count on how many people were drawn in by the film’s advertising campaign. I can’t assume a large number of people went based on Abrams’ trademark secrecy, which didn’t quite work for this film the way it did with Super 8.

Star Trek Into Darkness is a hit. Not a giant hit, and not the kind of thing that has studios calling all of their rivals and screaming "Suck it!" while guzzling champagne at 8 a.m. (at least , that's how we picture it), but a big enough hit all the same. Especially when you account for its huge improvement with global audiences, Star Trek Into Darkness has done well enough to keep the franchise alive… which means, inevitably, it's time to start talking about sequels

There has been a lot of build up for the first of what are likely to be many more sequels in the Star Trek franchise reboot and it's arrival didn't disappoint at the box office, though it didn't quite manage to outperform its predecessor.

ABC's affiliation with Disney seems to be paying off a bit more for Jimmy Kimmel Live since Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise. Last month, Kimmel staged a pretty heated (and amusing) confrontation between Harrison Ford and his old pal Chewbacca. Apparently the two had a falling out over an indiscretion between Chewy and Leia. The topic of the wookiee came up again this week when Star Wars and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams visited Kimmel's show.

A lot of people were expecting Star Trek Into Darkness, with the added benefit of 3D and a big-time villain its center, to open a whole lot bigger than the first Star Trek film that J.J. Abrams directed in 2009. And while the movie is much bigger than the first one overseas-- which is what really counts these days-- it's not any bigger here at home, and that's even with the 3D bump.

Whether you've been carefully avoiding spoilers for months or reveling in every single rumor about the villain's true identity and what happens to Captain Kirk, the time has finally come to talk about Star Trek Into Darkness with all the secrets out in the open. And this movie in particular is one you really want to talk about with spoilers, since J.J. Abrams and company worked hard to keep us from knowing much of anything before the movie opened-